A Believer's Journal

Three short poems written this morning playing with rhyme …

Out of the muck

What luck
Got my truck
Out of the muck
In which it was stuck

1 John 4:18

Spiders and snakes,
heights and quakes.
Strangers and failure,
Loneliness and censure.
Falling and flying,
losing and dying.
All of our years,
filled with fears
nothing can alleviate,
nothing can ameliorate,
nothing can attenuate,
but love.

Listening to Bela Fleck’s “My Bluegrass Heart”

What fun! the fiddle diddles and dances
while banjo clucks and mandolin prances.
Bravo! the bass galumphs and ambles,
as dobro glissades and guitar gambols.
Bela and Michael, Molly and Sierra,
Justin and Mark, a bluegrass coloratura.

it is not merely the notes that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

four arms and four appended bows unmoving, suspended in air
the last vibrations of violin and viola and cello strings now unheard
yet indelibly etched into feeling and memory by that exquisite moment
          of silence

breath and bones and bosom seized by the sudden cry of the loon
its ebbing wail pulling water and wood and paddle and body into its ineffable yearning
yet its power to transfix, transform, transcend is released in what follows
          in the silence

it is not merely the words that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

the poem speaks as much by what is left unwritten
and the sermon by what is left unsaid
the Lord is in his holy temple, let all on earth
          keep silence